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GOLD LINE TOURS, INC., Petitioner, vs.

HEIRS OF MARIA CONCEPCION


LACSA, Respondents.

The veil of corporate existence of a corporation is a fiction of law that should not defeat the ends of
justice.

FACTS:

Ma. Concepcion Lacsa boarded a Goldline passenger bus owned and operated by Travel & Tours
Advisers, Inc. Before reaching their destination, the Goldline bus collided with a passenger jeepneys and
as a result, a metal part of the jeepney was detached and struck Concepcion in the chest, causing her
instant death.

Concepcion’s heirs, represented by Teodoro Lacsa, instituted in the RTC a suit against Travel & Tours
Advisers Inc. to recover damages arising from breach of contract of carriage.

The complaint alleged that the collision was due to the reckless and imprudent manner by which Abania
had driven the Goldline bus. In support of the complaint, Miriam testified that Abania had been
occasionally looking up at the video monitor despite driving his bus at a fast speed; that the bus had
collided with a service jeepney while in the process of overtaking another bus.

To refute the plaintiffs’ allegations, the defendants presented that the driver of the jeepney had been at
fault for failing to observe precautionary measures to avoid the collision and suggested that criminal and
civil charges should be brought against the operator and driver of the jeepney. The defendants blamed
the death of Concepcion to the recklessness of Bilbes as the driver of the jeepney, and of its operator,
Salvador Romano; and that they had consequently brought a third-party complaint against the latter.26

The RTC ruled in favor of the heirs of Concepcion and thereafter, Gold Line appealed the decision to
the CA but the CA dismissed the appeal for failure of the defendants to pay the docket and other lawful
fees within the required period as provided in Rule 41, Section 4 of the Rules of Court. The dismissal
became final.

Thereafter, the heirs of Concepcion moved for the issuance of a writ of execution to implement the
decision and RTC granted their motion. Petitioner submitted a verified third party claim, claiming that
the tourist bus be returned to petitioner because it was the owner and that petitioner was a corporation
entirely different from Travel & Tours Advisers, Inc. then RTC dismissed petitioner’s verified third-
party claim, observing that the identity of Travel & Tours Adivsers, Inc. could not be divorced from that
of petitioner considering that Cheng had claimed to be the operator as well as the
President/Manager/incorporator of both entities; and that Travel & Tours Advisers, Inc. had been known
in Sorsogon as Goldline. They (Goldline) appealed the decision to CA but CA dismissed their petition
and affirmed the decision of RTC.

ISSUE:

Whether or not Travel & Tours Advises, Inc. has an existence separate and/or distinct from Gold Line
Tours, Inc.

RULING:

NO. The two companies are actually one and the same, hence the two corporations are liable to the death
of Ma. Concepcion Lacsa.

The Court was not persuaded by the proposition of the third party claimant that a corporation has an
existence separate and/or distinct from its members insofar as this case at bar is concerned, for the
reason that whenever necessary for the interest of the public or for the protection of enforcement of their
rights, the notion of legal entity should not and is not to be used to defeat public convenience, justify
wrong, protect fraud or defend crime.
In the case of Palacio vs. Fely Transportation Co., the Supreme Court held that:

"Where the main purpose in forming the corporation was to evade one’s subsidiary liability for damages
in a criminal case, the corporation may not be heard to say that it has a personality separate and distinct
from its members, because to allow it to do so would be to sanction the use of fiction of corporate entity
as a shield to further an end subversive of justice (La Campana Coffee Factory, et al. v. Kaisahan ng
mga Manggagawa, etc., et al., L-5677, May 25, 1953).

This is what the third party claimant wants to do including the defendant in this case, to use the separate
and distinct personality of the two corporation as a shield to further an end subversive of justice by
avoiding the execution of a final judgment of the court.

The RTC thus rightly ruled that petitioner might not be shielded from liability under the final judgment
through the use of the doctrine of separate corporate identity. Truly, this fiction of law could not be
employed to defeat the ends of justice.

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